


Hard to Find

by bloodpopsicles



Category: iZombie (TV)
Genre: F/M, No Smut, blaine is both a piece of shit AND very sad, bottle episode, i just wanted them in a room together, just sitting and talking about emotions, liv is on special ops brain, sexual tension--but just tension, threats of violence but no actual violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-11
Updated: 2018-04-11
Packaged: 2019-04-21 14:34:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14287032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bloodpopsicles/pseuds/bloodpopsicles
Summary: Blaine gets a message from Peyton that sparks hope in his dead heart. Instead, he finds Liv who has finally decided to take out the biggest asshole in New Seattle. Her assassination attempt doesn't go as planned.





	Hard to Find

There’s something so good about being bad. About taking rock bottom as a challenge and digging on far past the bedrock. As long as you’re buried you may as well be six feet under.

If moral rot was a game, Blaine sure as hell would be winning. He had switched sides more times than he could count, double crossed the double crossers, even tapdanced on the threshold between life and death enough times that he knew the Reaper personally. But he was still standing while so many others were red smears on pavement, which counted for something in a world where living dead was preferable to not living at all.

He was in the middle of verifying brain orders (and cooking the books for good measure) when his phone buzzed. Blaine flipped the iPhone screen up, expecting an update from Don E or god forbid that drip Chase Graves. Instead he did a wide eyed double take when he saw the notification on his screen. 

Peyton Charles: Staying out of trouble?

Well, no. Duh. He chewed his bottom lip and opened the text. Hesitantly, he typed back.

Blaine DeBeers: Trying. 

Peyton Charles: And failing I’m sure. Look, try to refrain from visits to the interrogation room. I’m not gonna be there to save your ass next time.

Blaine DeBeers: I thought that one minute to midnight save was on the mayor’s orders?

Peyton Charles: Sure was. Regardless, it was… tough seeing you again.

Blaine closed his eyes and dragged a hand across his face. Why did she make him feel like some nervous 15 year old? It fucked with his image, his whole ruthless killer wrap. Still. He couldn’t quite hate the sensation. 

Blaine DeBeers: Same here. 

Peyton Charles: Sometimes I think… All that shit I said the last time? Sometimes I regret it.

Blaine stared at the phone as the seconds ticked by, not really seeing. 

Blaine Debeers: Same here. 

Peyton Charles: Do you ever think about trying again?

An image flashed in his mind, of Liv and Peyton wine drunk on their couch, cackling and waiting for his response. Waiting to catch him humiliated. 

Blaine took a deep breath, and checked the room to make sure he was alone. A force of habit that felt different this time. 

Blaine DeBeers: All the time.

Peyton Charles: Then why can’t we?

X

“One hell of a spring in your step boss!” Don E exclaimed as Blaine swaggered to the mirror in his office for final touches. “Someone’s getting lucky tonight.”

“Don, if you even think about contacting me for the next 36 hours I will personally separate your empty head from your shoulders,” he purred as he straightened his tie. 

7:30, he was picking her up at her apartment then they were heading to Il Vicino’s downtown, and then… Well. Then.

“But what if Chase Graves, or—”

Blaine shot Don E a look that could cut glass. Through gritted teeth, Blaine growled. “Handle it.”

Something warm was blooming at the base of his spine, trickling it’s way up his vertebrae. Something he had almost forgotten. It quieted the buzzing anger, and against his best instinct, Blaine felt a flicker of hope quiver in his slow heartbeat. 

X

Approaching the apartment door, Blaine felt heat prickling all over. He was probably cruising at slightly above room temp, which for a zombie meant he was close to jumping out of his skin. He glanced at the bouquet of white roses in his hand. Stupid, too forward. He shook his head, shaking off the nerves. Now or never. 

Blaine knocked three times, swallowing hard. 

The door swung open and he was ready with a smile, but instead of being greeted by her beautiful face he was met with the business end of a baseball bat. The full on zombie mode face of Liv Moore was the last thing he saw before lights out.

X

Blaine blinked back the fuzziness, greeted by a throbbing head wound. He tried to move his arms but they were fixed to his sides with an amount of metal chains he would call overkill. He was strapped in a wooden chair, barely able to wiggle his little finger much less anything else, and Liv Moore was sitting on the couch across from him. 

“Never would have pegged you for a Louisville slugger, Liv,” he groaned.

“Wow, straight from unconscious to quipping. Why am I not surprised?” 

Blaine attempted a shrug. “Oh, it’s just a defense mechanism. Can’t let on just how fucking pissed I am at you right now.” His eyes flared red.

Liv smirked, mean and defiant. “Scary.”

She caught his quick glance toward his feet.

“No such luck, you’re completely weapon free. I hoped you wouldn’t bring a gun, what with this your big second chance at romance, and I was right. But I remembered Peyton mentioning something about a butterfly knife on the ankle?” She held up the folded blade. “And sure enough. Even on a date Blaine?”

“What can I say,” he smirked. “I feel naked without it. So what’s the plan, Liv? You finally got the stones to finish the job you started, what, four years ago now? Took ya long enough.”

Liv shrugged. “Good of the many. You’ve wreaked enough havoc that the pros have begun to outweigh the cons. My conscience will cope.”

He barked out a laugh. “Since when?Whose brain are you on, special ops?”

For the first time he saw a glimpse of the Liv he knew. “Blackwater, interrogator,” she answered, her voice low and dark. The she snapped back to attention. “It makes things a hell of a lot more black and white. Simple, even.”

Scoffing, Blaine raised an eyebrow. “Black and white? C’mon, Casper, you know better than that. It hasn’t been black and white for a long time, not since you chowed down on your first cerebellum.”

“Oh, so now you’re gonna give me the old ‘we’re not so different you and I’ speech?” Liv asked. “I’ve seen a Batman movie, dude. We are not nor have we ever been the same.”

Blaine rolled his eyes. “Yeah well maybe not, but I’m not the one ready to torture a guy strapped to a chair.” 

That seemed to give Liv pause. Blaine dug in his heels.

“Meat cleaver to the neck, was that the plan? Bullet to the head? Cause it’s decapitation or nothin’ Liv, and I’m not sure you’ve got that in you.”

“I—” she started to stammer out.

“See?” Blaine continued. “I don’t think you’d even stop your hands from shaking long enough to cut through the trachea or pull the trigger. Why? Because you’re good.” He spit out the word like an epithet. “If you try we’ll both just end up embarrassed. Leave it to the professionals, Liv, trust me.”

Liv opened her mouth and closed it again, looking away. Her gaze fell to a spot on the floor behind Blaine he couldn’t see. A slow, tiny smile appeared. “Flowers?” she asked with a tweaked eyebrow. “Really?” 

If he wasn’t chained within an inch of his life, Blaine would have probably killed her. But now it was a game of show and tell. If he called her bluff and acted on the shame and anger ripping through him like a stab wound, she would be right. She would have an excuse to put him down. 

So with every bit of effort he could muster, Blaine kept his eyes squeezed shut until the red drained from his irises and his breathing was even again. He leaned his head back and met her gaze. “White roses are her favorite.”

“What did you think was gonna happen tonight?” Liv asked.

Blaine went quiet. A tiny paranoid part of him had wondered whether it could be a trap, but it had been drowned by the waves of nervous hope. She had found the one thing that made him stupid. Even he had to admit, well played.

“Dinner, maybe drinks. Guess I shouldn’t believe everything I read,” he answered, trying to be snide and failing. He just sounded sad. 

Liv shifted uncomfortably, her eyes going to the floor. “It was the only way I knew for sure you would—”

“Tell me one thing,” he demanded, his voice low and measured. “One question answered honest. Did she know?”

Liv was silent for a moment before answering. “No,” she said. “She’s at a no-tech retreat for the weekend. Left her phone, and this intel specialist brain knew how to jailbreak it. She had nothing to do with it.”

Blaine nodded slightly, trying hard to keep a blank face. He realized he had been holding his breath. “Good to know.”

He cleared his throat and blinked a few times, puffing out his chest best he could against the restraints. “Well let’s get it over with Marine, we’re burning daylight. Semper fi, whatever the fuck that means.” At this point he couldn’t even tell if he was bluffing. 

Liv took a deep breath and pulled a black square case from under the coffee table. She rolled out the combination on the multiple dial lock, popped the lid, and revealed a gun, a clip, and a silencer.

Shit, Blaine thought, biting his tongue.

Liv assembled the gun with quick, efficient precision, cocked it, and approached Blaine with cold eyes. She brought the piece up til it was aiming between his eyes. 

Blaine pulled back from the barrel, a reflex he had seen plenty of times from the other end of the bullet. He wasn’t fond of the role reversal. 

“Any last words?” Liv asked, the soldier behind her eyes talking.

Blaine thought for a second, swallowing the fear poisoning his stomach. “Fuck you.”

And suddenly Liv wasn’t there. She was staring at some spot 6 inches in front of her face, lost in someone else’s memories. Blaine sighed, glancing around the room for a possible weapon or escape. 

Christ, this was a long one. Blaine wished he could passive aggressively check his watch. Instead all he could do was stare at the gun shoved in his face while Liv went on her violent little vision quest. 

Liv sucked in a breath and dropped the gun on the carpet. 

“Hey!” Blaine flinched away from the piece best he could. “Loaded weapon!”

Shaking, Liv looked down at her hands in horror. “Oh my god,” she breathed as she staggered to the couch. She sat with her face in her hands. 

She was still quiet 30 seconds later, and Blaine was getting uncomfortable. What if she started crying? He wasn’t prepared for that.

“Hey,” he offered in a low voice. “That wasn’t you.”

For the first time she looked up at him. “I-I was torturing someone, and they were begging me… Begging me to kill them. And then I did, like it was nothing!” Her voice cracked, and he knew she was the old Liv, the Liv who somehow managed to keep a conscience even as a zombie. 

Blaine searched for something to say and drew a blank. When he woke up this morning he didn’t expect to be consoling the woman who had just tried to kill him. 

“Look, it’s—”

“How do you do it?” she asked. “Killing people. How is it so easy for you?”

Blaine’s knee jerk reaction was a quippy comeback, but his smirk faded as her question echoed. “It… gets easier.”

“But it shouldn’t,” Liv replied. She screwed her eyes shut. “God, why can’t you just stop?! You’ve helped me before, you’re capable of it, but every time I turn around you’re on some new scheme that just ends in death and pain and blood. Just… why are you like this?” 

Blaine was taken aback by the desperation in her voice. After all the times she told him he was a murderer and a monster, this was different. She wasn’t asking to make a point, she just wanted to know. 

Blaine thought for a moment, his gaze going glassy. “Cause I’m good at it.” 

“I’m good at jigsaw puzzles! You don’t see me dedicating my life to the puzzle trade!”

Blaine chuckled, colored with a tinge of sadness. “I’m not good at much else.” He rehearsed the list he kept at the back of his mind and would revisit late at night every now and then. “In the criminal game, I’m a legacy. And the whole morality thing kind of died on the vine what with the mom’s suicide, the beatings from dad… Don’t think i stood a chance, really.”

Liv leaned forward and met his gaze. “Your shitty childhood? Really? You don’t seem like the kind to surrender your destiny to anyone, let alone your father.”

“It’s a reason.”

“But not an excuse. People have abusive parents, they survive tragedy and trauma every day… And they choose to be good.”

Blaine sighed. After a moment, he asked. “You ever read any Flannery O’Connor?”

Liv blinked. “I was pre-med, so--”

“Junior year, Puget Sound Prep Academy. My third boarding school, and definitely not the last. Dealing weed on the side for a few years, or screwing the headmaster’s daughter racked me up a few expulsions. In American Lit the teacher assigned ‘A Good Man is Hard to Find,’ this fucked up little short story, and for once I did the reading. This horrible old woman is on a road trip with her family through the South, and we keep hearing about this outlaw and his gang racking up bodies on the backroads. The Misfit. So of course, they run headlong into the guy. And in between massacring this family the grandmother keeps asking him why, and telling him he’s a good man, that she can see that in his face. She tells him to pray, and that Jesus will forgive him if only he would ask.” Blaine smirked, lost in the story. “And when it comes down to it he tells her he doesn’t care. That he’s done so much bad that there’s no going back, so why not make it spectacular?”

He shook his head slightly and locked eyes with Liv. “At some point you look down and find a gun in your hand, so you load it. I’m the bad guy. At least I know who I am. Can you say the same?” 

Liv frowned. “What… Of course, I know exactly--”

“Liv Moore, crusader for justice, blah blah blah. But every week you’re a different person, you’re a hockey player or a PTA mom or…” He cut his eyes at her. “A government spook. And I get it, I’ve been on the brain diet on and off. But at the end of the day, I know exactly who’s lookin at me in the mirror, good bad or otherwise.”

Liv was quiet for a moment. “Maybe it’s how I make sense of everything in the time of Z. I have to compensate for Liv the Zombie, because Liv Before, Human Liv can’t stand the idea that she has to hurt people to stay alive.”

Blaine let out a heavy breath, raising his eyebrows. “Shit, sweetheart. You gotta let that go.”

She shot him a reproachful look.

“No really,” he answered. “I mean whatever gets you through the day, but that’s no way to live. I know you missed out on, what, a surgical career, a normal life? But now you’re solving murders—some of which were committed by me— left and right. Me, I was a loser, a bagman, a low-level lackey pre-Team Z. Look at me now,” he chuckled, glancing around at his predicament. “King of the world, more or less.”

He met her gaze. “You either take it, and embrace it, or you’re miserable. And even though we’re, whatever, mortal enemies, it sucks to see you cryin’ for what coulda been.”

“Easy for you to say,” Liv mumbled. “God are we bonding?”

“Oh c’mon Liv, it’s not like we haven’t done it before. You and me are simpatico on some subconscious level, at least.” Blaine’s mouth twisted up in a sly smirk. “Honestly I’m surprised you and I never hooked up, back when our dating pool was more…shallow. Can’t believe you resisted my devastating good looks and impeccable wit.”

Liv shot him a look of disgust. “Never in a million years. I don’t have sex with people I hate.”

Blaine shrugged. “I have sex with people I hate all the time, and more often than not I think the feeling’s mutual. You should try it sometime--no feelings, and it’s almost always hot as hell.”

Liv leveled him with a look. “Did you hate Peyton?”

His smirk faded to a straight line. “...no. Of course not. She was different.”

“Aren’t they always?” Liv scoffed.

Blaine narrowed his eyes and chewed on the inside of his mouth. “And what’s that supposed to mean?”

“You may think you’re the biggest badass who’s ever lived, drug kingpin underworld extraordinaire, but dude. Guys like you are a dime a dozen.” Liv lowered her voice and furrowed her brow, imitating him. “I’m dangerous, and unbearably sexy, and do you wanna hear about my tragic backstory? Because despite what you think I’m actually really sensitive, please have sex with me?”

Blaine narrowed his eyes but bit his tongue.

Liv continued. “Men like you sit around waiting for some special gal to show up who’s smart and kind and gives just as good as she takes. And once you meet your match you expect her to save you, to ‘make you a better man,’ to fix you by loving you. But it doesn’t work like that, man! Peyton’s a person—and an amazing person at that—not just some prop for your redemption arc.”

Blaine was quiet for a while, a long time by his standards. His eyes were unfocused and his mouth was a hard flat line. It would have been easier to be angry, but what he was feeling was worse. 

“So you’re saying I can’t love her? Or anyone? That I’m not capable of it?” he asked, quietly.

Liv shrugged, sighing. “I don’t know what you’re capable of, Blaine. But it sure seems like you don’t believe you can change without someone to change for. Really, you can do it all by yourself. Whenever you want.”

Liv got up, hands on her hips. “I need a drink.”

“Make it two,” Blaine intoned, still staring at something only he could see. “Unless you’re still planning on killing me tonight?”

She said nothing, but brought back two glasses and fiddled with his restraints enough to let him get an arm out. 

Liv half expected him to grab her and turn this into a brawl, so she was careful to flinch away quickly. Blaine just winked at her. 

“Don’t be stupid,” he said before sipping his tobasco-vodka concoction. “I’m not gonna hurt you Liv. I had plenty of chances over the last few years, many times when it would’ve been the smart thing to do. But I can’t help it, I like ya kid. Don’t have the heart.”

Liv grimaced. “I’m honored? And you can’t blame me for not taking you at your word. You’re big on revenge and tonight I tried to make you worm food.”

“And failed, as expected. So what, you’re just gonna keep me tied to a chair for the foreseeable future, in case I go postal once I’m free? Gotta say I don’t like that plan…”

Liv hesitated. “I’ll think of something.”

“Not that I wouldn’t love a Three’s Company style sitch with the girls, I’m sure there would be hijinks aplenty.”

Liv let out a small laugh. 

Blaine pointed with the drink in his hand and grinned. “Ah! She smiles! Alert the media! I knew I’d get you sooner or later.”

Liv’s small grin faded.

“Aaaand it’s gone.” Blaine sighed.

Liv frowned and looked at him earnestly. “Do you think, in a different life, if we had both made very different choices… maybe we could have been friends?”

Blaine raised his eyebrows and thought about it. “I’ve never been big on friends. Never really had many. But if we overlook the double-crossing and the trying to kill each other... And given that I talk to like 5 people on the regs… I think maybe we’re friends now?” he asked, with a raised eyebrow and a narrowed gaze. “In a very loose sense of the word.”

Liv tilted her head in contemplation and took another sip of her drink. “For tonight? Sure.”

Blaine nodded. “For tonight then.”

They drank in silence for a while, until the alcohol (must have been Peyton’s stash of lighter fluid) spilled all the words tumbling around in his head out into the air. Or maybe the drink was just an excuse.

“I do think I loved her, because she was better than me,” more to himself than anything. Part of him forgot Liv was even there.

“Because she made me want to be good enough for her. And me, shame and guilt guy? I’m talking unheard of. I don’t…” he stammered. “I don’t think she was just some supporting character I used to make my story more interesting… I hope not. I didn’t mean for her to be.”

Doubt wriggled black and slick in his stomach. 

Blaine groaned. “I guess none of it matters now anyway. In the end it was all just a roundabout way of pulling her down.”

Liv frowned, and shifted uncomfortably. “Well, if it makes you feel any better, I don’t think Peyton has ever let a man stop her from doing exactly what she wanted. So if you think you were her fall from grace or whatever, I hate to break it to you but you didn’t ruin anything.”

Blaine didn’t know if that made him feel better or worse. He ruined people, that was what he did, his modus operandi. If Peyton came out unscathed, did he even matter to her? If everything he touched ended up fucked, what did it mean if she wasn’t?

But all he said was “Yeah.”

Suddenly, Liv blurted out “It was a dick move, using her phone. It’s the only thing I knew that would get you here, cause you still hold a candle... “ She trailed off and furrowed her brow. “I think I always knew that no matter how many times you lied and manipulated and--god, faked amnesia--that was real. I guess under all the hair product and murder there are genuine feelings,” she smiled sadly.

Blaine rolled his eyes. “Ya got me. But don’t go telling all of New Seattle I have a weakness for whip-smart brunettes. I have a reputation, for christ’s sake.”

Liv gave up a small grin, looking at the ground. After a second, she nodded slightly, and rose from the couch.

Blaine watched as she walked around the coffee table, not knowing whether she was gonna kill him or kiss him or go to the fridge for a snack. At this point he’d be fine with any of those choices. Instead, she walked behind him and unlocked his restraints.

He watched her with a suspicious gaze as she took her place back on the couch. He rubbed his wrists where they were red and raw and glanced at the gun still on the carpet. Closer to him than her.

“C’mon, the suspense is killing me, what’s the play?” he asked. 

“No play,” Liv answered. “This was a mistake. The door is unlocked. I don’t know what happens next. You know where I live, you know where I work--”

“I’ve always known both of those things.” He was still sitting in the chair.

Liv frowned. “Yeah.”

Blaine looked at her, at the door, at the gun. Finally he heaved a heavy sigh. “Do you want another drink?” he asked with a tweaked eyebrow.

Liv looked up at him with wide eyes, and her face softened until a ghost of a smile appeared. “Sure.”


End file.
